Culture Shaping: Wisdom for the Modern Workplace

“Culture Shaping: Wisdom for the Modern Workplace” – With Special Guest Dan McDonough

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan McDonough on my show Cultural Brilliance Radio. Dan currently serves as the President of the Kansas City Chapter of Culture Ambassadors, and as the National Director of corporate wellbeing at LiveAnew, Inc. Dan dedicates his life’s work to helping people in organizations achieve engagement, fulfillment and full potential. He believes everyone deserves and should expect a flourishing life of purpose and meaning, anchored by gratifying emotions, mastering your experiences and intrinsic motivation.

Below is an article written by the Conscious Business Radio team about the show.

Cultural Brilliance helps you experience groundbreaking ways to transform your company’s culture. Host Claudette Rowley invites some of the foremost experts on organizational culture to help understand how to make a brilliant culture the rule rather than the exception.

Claudette had the opportunity to speak with Dan McDonough, President of the Kansas City Chapter of Culture Ambassadors, and as the National Director of corporate wellbeing at LiveAnew, Inc. The Kansas City Chapter of Culture Ambassadors serves as a pillar for the Academy of Culture Ambassadors. In his position as President, Dan McDonough helps organize and grow a community of exemplary employee organizations, supported by a national network of city chapters that share the idea of strategic excellence that inspires them most vibrant and flourishing workplaces. In his role as National Director at LiveAnew, Dan aligns wellbeing science and social networking technology for employer clients through an online and onsite culture shaping platform.

Today’s discussion starts with an explanation of the Academy of Culture Ambassadors. Dan explains it was put together by Dr. Gerald Wagner, specifically to help organizations create workplace cultures that their employees love. Dan goes on to say that as companies across the nation continue to grapple with all the issues they have of talent attraction and retention, engagement, and ultimately performance, culture seems to be the word of the hour. There’s no shortage of information available for people that are interested, but the Academy really tries to bring it to one place.

Claudette mentions that in the past, employees might not have said culture was such an important element of their satisfaction at work, and asks Dan what he believes is the cause of this shift. He explains that as wellness evolved into wellbeing, there began a much broader scope of humanistic elements, and people began looking at culture from an intrinsic perspective. The biggest reason we are talking about culture is because it’s not just programs and classes, – it is about the values and behaviors within an organization that permeate the daily life of the employees. If there is a culture that supports a high performing mentality, now we’re in a situation where we can make some progress.

Dan continues by explaining that today’s most critical business topic is culture because it is the energizing and unifying force of an organization.

Finally, Dan talks about the importance of positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement at an organizational level. If you have a culture with those five elements in place on a daily basis, – that’s something worthwhile. That’s going to be a culture you want to work with, it’s not going to be hard to recruit, people are going to want to stay, and you’ll keep the star performers. That’s what this is really all about.

Through our three phase Cultural Brilliance™ methodology – Cultural Authenticity™, Cultural Design™ and Cultural Integration™, we help organizations uncover their authentic culture, design an environment that aligns with their most important strategic goals, and integrate positive culture changes.

We align our work with your business strategy to determine what a high performance culture looks like for your organization and for your people. Our approach reveals an authentic depiction of “what is” as well as “what is to be”.

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We first began using Claudette Rowley as a coach early in 2008, and after five team-building sessions that year, I can honestly say that it is the best thing we have ever done for our office staff in terms of morale building and creating a culture that fosters effective communication, honesty and trust, and an openness to quickly address and resolve conflict as it arises. This has been accomplished by the new skills Claudette has taught the group, and it has spread beyond my expectations.

Bert Copple, Franchise Owner at Home Instead Senior Care

Claudette has a strong ability to generate new insights into the root causes of interpersonal/organizational issues – helping them get “unstuck”. She’s great at restoring momentum for leaders and companies.

Matt Edison, President at Diamond-Roltran, LLC

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We align with business strategy and determine early on what a high performance culture looks like for your organization. Our approach creates an authentic depiction of "what is" as well as "what is to be."